Approaching science, how does an armless robot "smash" glass with its mind?

Today, a piece of news went viral on WeChat Moments. It said that a robot at the China Hi-Tech Fair suddenly smashed the glass of a booth without any instructions, which eventually destroyed part of the booth and injured a visitor who was sent to the hospital. I don't know who took the lead in shouting "Robots kill people", and the whole world was talking about "Westworld" and "The Force Awakens".

Come, eat something first and calm down.

Leifeng.com carefully looked at the picture accompanying the news and saw the shape of the robot. It was hard to imagine how this cylindrical robot, which looked very low in IQ and had no arms (maybe the white one next to it was an arm, but it couldn't reach the ground at all, and it couldn't squat down), could achieve the goal of "smashing the booth". Was it through thoughts, brain waves, telepathy, or splitting palms? CCAV10's "Approaching Science" will give you the answer.

Let me tell you, this type of robot has poor movement ability. Maybe it has a few wheels on the base that can roll slowly, but that's the only movement it can handle. If this configuration can damage a booth or injure people, then Boston Dynamics' Atlas would have to admit defeat, and CMU's National Engineering Research Center would have to ask it how motion control is done.

Let’s take a look at what robots with strong athletic capabilities look like.

It looks like this:

It looks like this:

It looks like this:

The common feature is that they look tough and durable (robust) and have a strong mechanical feel. Only with such configuration, such joints, motors and hydraulic devices can they provide strong movement capabilities. If you look back at the fat guy, what else does he have besides emoticons?

The official statement of the High-Tech Fair was released soon, saying that the staff of the exhibitor misoperated and mistook the "forward key" for the "backward key", causing a robot used to assist in the display of projection technology to crash into the glass of the booth, which fell to the ground and shattered and scratched a spectator, causing his ankle to be cut and bleeding. Although what was said in this statement is inconsistent with the specific situation at the time, this statement is scientifically tenable.

The widely circulated news used two words, one was "self-driving", which implied the robot's autonomous consciousness; the other was "smashing and smashing", which described the robot's aggressiveness. These two factors made the already popular AI threat theory even worse. I would like to ask, who will pay for the social impact brought about by such biased reports?

The technological progress in the robotics industry and the entire AI field is gradual. No one can secretly save up a big move like Ding Peng, who practiced martial arts for 18 years and defeated the one-armed swordsman with just six moves as soon as he debuted and became famous from then on. This is not the way technological development works. Technological development has traces to follow, such as papers and discussions at top academic conferences. If such an amazing robot really appears, there must be signs beforehand.

I don’t know whether artificial intelligence will ever “wake up” one day, nor do I know whether the so-called “singularity” will come. Of course, if you say that everything is possible in the future, there is nothing to refute. After all, from the perspective of possibility, I might marry Song Joong-ki, and I might become the richest man in the world.

Last year, "Big Hero 6" was a hit and Baymax became famous. Many people had high expectations for this cute robot. At that time, Leifeng.com interviewed many top scholars and practitioners in the AI ​​industry, but their views were pessimistic. They believed that such machines with autonomous consciousness would not exist before we are alive or in the foreseeable future.

"Some people think that AI will take over humans. I think it's too early. It's not creative at all, unless there's something wrong with the program. (Regarding the concerns about AI taking over humans), there's an old Chinese saying, 'A man in Qi worries about the sky.'"

——Lei Xin, CTO of Mobvoi.

“Some people think that artificial intelligence is strong artificial intelligence, which has some creativity and autonomy, but now no matter which branch of artificial intelligence it is, there is no sign of this from a technical perspective.

——Turing Robotics Engineer Yang Zhao

"At least in my lifetime, whether it's fifty or a hundred years, I understand that it's impossible. I don't believe in fully personalized emotions, biological self-learning, self-reproduction, etc."

——Professor Wang Tianmiao, professor and doctoral supervisor at Beihang University, honorary director of the Robotics Institute of Beihang University, and chairman of the IEEE Robotics and Automation China Beijing Region.

If we ask them this question again today, the answers will probably be the same.

According to Leifeng.com, the robot is named "Xiaopang" and is produced by Beijing Evolver Robotics Technology Co., Ltd. After the incident further fermented, Evolver Robotics also issued a public statement, and its explanation of the accident was consistent with that of the organizers of the High-Tech Fair, that it was a human error.